Topic: No Mining = End of Bitcoin? (Read 5740 times)

This thread keeps going on and on.  But I think we can all agree no matter what there would be some holdouts running miners for fun, to keep network up.  So there will never be no miners.... so it never "ends" bitcoin.

I personally don't see bitcoin going to worth nothing, I think it will continue to grow.  So likely hashrate will grow more .. and more.  If you look at amount of gear mining right now we are pretty secure from going to no mining.

No mining will be the end of Bitcoin for sure... but i dont think mining bitcoin will be end, like impossible to end. But perhaps there will be a competitor for bitcoin then maybe, just maybe bitcoin can 'end'.

But like many other say, there always be ppl who willing to do something not for sake of profit, but for fun...so yeah... long live BTC.

This is in "theory" if the main mining pool like hashnest or bigger pools stopped what they were doing..

But since thats not the case, the best scenario to come out of the hard code # reached is the fees that can be produced.

In a home mining level, you`d still would be better off just sell stuff for bitcoin.

Pods would be great for certain aspects, but cost chances are will be higher compared to a full size miner.   I personally am a fan of the S7 (and what looks like carried to S9).   Getting the most hash I can out of the miner.  But I realize I am lucky for sound/power not to be a problem.

Don't get me wrong I would buy a few pods like I did with compacs and lotto mine chances are.   But I don't think it is still a way's till a product comes  (if any) though that.

This. AFAIK, less miners = lower difficulty = more profit. In short, difficulty is adjusted according to the network hashrate, which means that Bitcoin (and virtually any other cryptocurrency) will always be profitable (by pool mining and/or solo mining). An equilibrium point.

Makes you think.  If miner's stop mining, as the amount of miners drop off, so would the difficulty. Allowing fewer miners to complete for the same amount of transactions. Difficulty is part of the algorithm, it's artificial.

Follow this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1487358.20

If this happens, and it's a big IF right now, it has my interest.

- zed

Honestly it's so far away no one can give a good speculation.   The hopes is that the fees make it where miners still profit.  But we don't even know what value and difficulty will be at the having coming up.  So going that far in future... just all guesses.

I'm sure some will try to speculate, but I just don't think it can be done accurately that far.

Bitcoin difficulty is now almost 2 billion and rising daily.  Because of this, miners are continually being forced to invest in bigger, more powerful chips to have any hope of claiming a block and the reward that goes along with it.

Currently miners are rewarded 25 BTC for each block they successfully add to the blockchain.  In July this reward will be cut in half, so rather than being paid approx. $12,500USD for each block, miners will be paid approx. $6,000.

In addition to this reward, miners also get all of the transaction fees for each transaction that forms part of their block.  The higher the transaction fees offered by the transferee, the bigger the profit for the miner.  So, as we have seen daily, when forming a block, miners look to include transactions for which users have paid a higher transaction fee.

With bitcoin halving fast approaching, miners are already starting to project huge declines in profits.  Some have already declared bankruptcy and others will follow. 
See here:  https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miner-kncminer-declares-bankruptcy/

With fewer miners, the funnel through which all BTC transactions must flow, gets smaller and smaller.  There have already been numerous cases of delayed or lost transactions as miners seek to profit by selecting only the highest rates of returns (processing only those transactions that come with a high transaction fee).  It would be reasonable to expect that as miners leave the BTC scene, transaction times will decrease further for all but those who are willing to pay ever increasing transaction fees.

Eventually we will reach a point where the only reward coming to miners will be through transaction fees and though many suggest this won't be for many years, the fact is that the implications of what's to come can already be seen and felt.

We will reach a point where there are very few miners operating and their sole opportunity for profit will come through transaction fees.  As Bitcoin becomes more centralized in the hands of a few miners and almost all transactions flowing through mining farms in China, the prospect of a Bitcoin mining monopoly looms larger and larger.

So what do you think is likely to happen to transaction fees at that point?





 

But there are people who will never stop mining...  so this will not happen.  Even worst case bitcoin failed and most left it there would be some who run a machine for fun.  So you still would have miners.

I don't think there is any realistic thing that will happen where no miners is a realistic option.   So future where no blocks are solved is just not going to happen.

Transactions would stop if there were no miners.

The S3 you can underclock and make it pretty quiet, but it's quiet dated at this point.  The S5 I kinda think of as hot and loud.   But going to either from a single compac is a pretty big jump.

But he also mentions 500 watt with latest generation, so S7-LN might be closest thing to what hes wanting.  But we don't know a ton about it yet.

The next step from USB mining would be either an Antminer S3 but a Antminer S5 is not very expensive either. Do note that you will not ROI but it's nice to play with a bigger Asic.

That's where I am now. Bitcoin mining is a hobby so I can learn more about blockchain. I like the idea of sidehack's Compac stick miners, and have one happily mining away at ~18 GH/s and earning between 750 and 1500 satoshis per day. In today's mining environment it will not ROI, but maybe it will sometime down the road. I'd also be interested in a 500 watt home miner built with the latest generation of ASICs if one gets built, preferably by someone here.

Cheers,

- zed

Yes, there is no bitcoin without mining because it is a "Proof of work" chain.

However, as long as there are inefficiencies in the market, I doubt mining will stop because people do need bitcoin so there is money to be made. This may be hard to grasp by many here because many here are hobbyist or speculators. I am with Phil, as a hobbyist, I will continue to mine regardless of price. Speculators looking to get rich quick will turn off their miners. Large mines such as Bitfury most likely will not, they plan for all sorts of scenarios.

As block rewards decrease, the fee market will increase to compensate miners. Yes that will make it more expensive to use bitcoin but keep in mind that Lightning network and other "off-chain" solutions will emerge to meet demand for smaller transactions. Bitcoin has utility that serves needs in the market that are otherwise not met so as long as there is this demand, bitcoin and mining will exist. A lot of fear mongering goes on about bitcoin failing but mind you it is code that will adapt to survive. Ultimately the market will determine the direction of bitcoin. A store of value and settlement layer do seem likely imo.

Also mining is not wasteful of energy. Mines such as Bitfury are becoming "zero carbon". As technology advances and carbon regulations become more stringent, mining will adapt. Now, if bitcoin was a creature of the state I would highly doubt its resilience but being it is open source it should survive in some form as there is utility.

I am not claiming to be an expert, just my opinion

I mined profitably last summer it was not as tough as this summer on margins with profit.  So I think your point about mining last summer is a little off.  I do agree if costs equal value or less chances are fewer mine.  Which will be interesting at having.

Also I think your point about Satoshi manipulating is not even in realm of being realistic.   I think you are looking at pretty far fetched ideas.

Yeah. That's one of the  dead ends with bitcoin. Remember the last summer while the price was 200$? Ask this to yourself, would you mine bitcoin if the price was 200$ and going around 200$ for more than a year? The answer is probably no. But somehow, price didn't stay at 200$ and jumped to 400$+ in  such a small timeframe. I don't know why, maybe people thought they were cheap and bought it or maybe satoshi bought his own coins to manipulate the price. As a result mining today is profitable for whose with cheap or free electricy, and because of that miners still exist. If mining stops, no more bitcoin.

One would hope that the owner of all that hashing power is sensible and does not want to bring down Bitcoin, but then again maybe that's the intent...

Cheers,

- zed

No, I don't think so. This is the whole idea of risk/reward. Take a big risk, get a big reward. Take a small risk, get a small reward. Think about IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. Each one of those companies took big risks. Each one of those companies was trying out new things that didn't have a proven track record, and they figured out how to make the ideas work and have been rewarded handsomely. The world is also littered with countless failures. People who had ideas that seemed great at the time, but never really caught on for whatever reason.

In the early days Bitcoin was essentially worthless so all the early adopters were taking a big risk that maybe Bitcoin would become widely adopted and rise in value. Fast forward to today, and one Bitcoin is trading for approximately €440, approximately $490, approximately ¥54,600, or approximately £335, and with sufficient volume and on a sufficient number of exchanges around the world that using Bitcoin to transfer value between two entities is relatively easy.

Today falls into the small risk/small reward zone. If you are getting into Bitcoin now, you already know that Bitcoin is valued, so where is the risk? The biggest known risk is getting scammed by someone you don't know, just like using any "regular" currency. Anyone with access to sufficient compute resources and the internet can set up a wallet, fund it, and start using Bitcoin.

Those early adopters took a flying leap off a cliff on the possibility that this new thing called Bitcoin might gain traction in the future. They didn't really know, but hey, they were willing to try. As Bitcoin evolved to have significant value, the adopters figured out better and better ways to hash the blockchain to collect the reward. The reward worked brilliantly. The reward drove development of new miners, software, and global scale-out. Now, with the reduction in the reward payout, we are at a stage where electricity cost is king, and that is driving the development of even more efficient hardware.

If you'd like another analogy, think about gold mining. It's always been labor intensive, but there was a  time where anyone strong enough to wield a pick and shovel and willing to take a risk, could stake a claim and mine for the precious metal. Fast forward to today and look at how the majority of gold is produced. Big huge companies with tremendous amounts of capital deploying tremendously expensive equipment to extract tiny amounts of the precious metal from the ground.

That's sort of where we are today with Bitcoin. The big mining companies/ASIC producers have the capital to deploy the hash rate to gather the lions share of the rewards, but there are still "subsistence miners" and "hobby miners" around the world performing the "hard labor" to find gold flakes or Bitcoin blocks. Why? Because there is still value in doing that. Can they compete with the big guys? No, but they do it anyway for one reason or another.

Bitcoin is no Ponzi scam. Bitcoin is a store of value, like gold is a store of value. Yes, gold has other uses beyond a store of value, but one could also argue that Bitcoin does, too.

Cheers,

- zed

asics have an issue  look at this chart

the owner of those asics added 1000ph   in under 2 hours to the network.

this makes asics not good because too many are in the hands of ?  bitmaintech most likely

gpus would not be as controlled by one company as asics are.

1200 ph  to 2200 ph to 1300 ph   see below:





a clear demo of too much hash power in one set of hands.

For individual graphics cards, they might not be reliable. But for the graphics cards as whole, they are reliable enough to secure the network.

To be fair, I don't see a problem with ASICs for three reasons.

1. Network security can be greatly increased by them.
2. An ASIC can be more stable than leaving a GPU on. I can attest to this; always find myself having to tend to my GPU farms although the code may not be refined as much.
3. Power consumption for the same security is lower.

However, there is the disadvantage where ASIC manufacturers are ahead of the game when it comes to mining at a lower difficulty. But what is the problem? They put the effort, time and dedication to making the product, they will therefore get the best returns, although I disagree whole heartedly with this whole pre-order to cover the ASIC cost then shaft the customers by mining with them themselves.


And for someone who mentioned the transactions being free, when all coins have been minted, and even before then, someone has to cover the miner's cost of securing the network and moving transactions along. The idea is TX fees slowly replace the block reward. Giving miners an incentive to keep mining, and to cover their costs.

ETH coins have an interesting take on attacking bitcoin's weaknesses.
Never let asics mine the coins.
Keep the coin in gpu.
There are multiple uses for a gpu besides mining. 
There are no uses for an ASIC mining Bitcoin.

Why ASIC builders were greedy and design to favor low power cost self mining..

If they built them as space heaters millions of units so that  anyone that needed a space heater would have one. So now They are  in a bind.
 I can see a nice crash coming.
Meanwhile ETH is smoking.
Why a gpu has multiple uses.


Both Amd and Nvidia have a financial incentive to buying ETH as a form of advertisement.

So does Intel.

Many gamers buy a bigger card and mine while they sleep.

Did the OP post a speculative question about mining in a subforum entitled "mining speculation"? What next, an offer to sell something in the "goods for sale" forum? Insanity.

To the OP's question:

The simple answer is yes. If "mining" ceased then the entire public ledger idea that bitcoin is built upon falls apart. No mining or insufficient mining would be equally problematic because there wouldn't be any network upon which transactions could take place and be verified.

Transaction fees should have been the primary source of revenue for all miners from day one, with coin rewards being an occasional bonus. As it is now the future of bitcoin is on thin ice at best, because the incentive to mine is declining exponentially while the rate of bitcoin rewards remains fixed.

There are some pretty big holes in the entire bitcoin idea, specifically the block chain itself. The idea of difficulty adjusting to ensure that the rate of new blocks being discovered pans out over a specified period of time is a self-defeating concept. It creates inefficiency and wastes electricity and/or computational resources for no benefit, with the sole intention of throttling the rate of new coins being discovered.

Whether all 21M bitcoins were discovered now or some time in the future is irrelevant, it's basically set up like a ponzi scam, where the "miners" who got in when bitcoin started were able to walk away with 2-5 coins a day and today most don't even get 1 per month.

The cost of mining at a rate quick enough to generate any meaningful bitcoins will evaporate. The tech level of developing super-efficient asic processors will require a lot of capital, and therefore will be something only a wealthy entity can undertake. You'll end up with one or two companies/groups that provide all of the hash power for the entire block chain...in fact it's mostly there now. That is an unfavorable dynamic that makes bitcoin very vulnerable to multi-spending and other types of manipulation if the "consensus" is simply one entity.

Transaction fees depend on transaction volume, and the daily total transaction volume of the bitcoin network doesn't really offer a whole lot when it would need to be divided up among hundreds of thousands of miners.

I think people will always mine, because think about it logically if people shut down their miners then the people that are left will mine at a lower difficulty which would make them more money, thus they would keep mining.  Their will always be people mining.

I mine for a living right now and am expanding in prep for halving. I'm also prepared to relocate to where there's cheap power -- most people would for a good job, so why not? I think lots of miners have not planned far in advance and will (at least temporarily) shut down. This should moderate the increase in diff, even as the big players ramp up. Even with talk of Bitfury mining with their own efficient chips, etc., we haven't seen a double-digit % increase in difficulty since Feb.

And I agree with philipma1957 -- Part of this is believing in BTC and speculating on the value over the next few years. I want more BTC now, even if I have to run some miners at a loss.
Besides,  I like getting paid every day 

To answer the OP's purely speculative question: yes, if all mining were to cease, BTC would be dead in the water.  You could create as many transactions as you wanted, but since nobody was mining them, they would never be included in blocks and hence, never confirmed.


No, one of the big selling points is that you can send BTC anywhere in the world very quickly, with very little cost to you.

Real world example.  I just sent nearly 10BTC to someone in another country in three separate transactions.  It cost me a grand total of $0.14 to do so.  Good luck doing that with Western Union, PayPal, or any other money transfer service.

Miner or no miner easy or difficult, nothing matters really in bitcoin world as long as there are gold and services are provided for bitcoin in return.
As more and more dollars/euros/gold/metals/anything that can be exchanged worldwide and has value worldwide are exchanged for bitcoin
There will always be bitcoin.
And for profit, I can't see any reason not to profit from mining. EVER.

I am mining as long as there is a block chain so the thread is pretty much a waste of time.

As no mining won't happen.

Many will mine if diff drops down to 1 vs current number of 178 soon to be 190.

the hope would be coins bounce back.  I can't see no mining being the end of bitcoin as people will mine no matter what as long as someone is running blockchain servers to point to.

I can waste 100 a month in power for zero return for as long as I want.  on the hope of bounce back.  many can do this.

But the goal would not to have transaction fees so high they stop people from using the network.   It's hard to speculate so far in future, but considering people can set how much transaction fee is on many wallets.... I don't see this to high happening.

On mining just to hard to speculate that far in advance.

If transaction fees are to high people will stop using bitcoins.

If earnings are to low people will not mine.

When all the 21M coins have been mined. Miners will make their money from transaction fees, so they still need those mining machines anyhow.

There will always be a group of so called die hards whom will always mine. But most of the miners or mining for commercial gain. If the market will not correct it will come to an end. Simply because there will be too less miners to confirm all these transactions.

There will always be miners so this is kinda a moot thread.  Many would run a miner for fun to keep network alive, i don't think it will ever have 0 miners.   I just don't see it.

On new chips only thing is mega mines get those same chips and pay pennies per KWH, so they are still ahead of hobby miner.  We really cannot catch up without having a HUGE investment.  In a lot of cases like bitfury you mentioned I bet it goes to many big mega farms before (and if we even get chance) to buy it.

I think there is a risk of bitcoin infrastructure deteriorating when mining becomes unprofitable. The solution would be new much better cheap chips with low energy cost that can earn transaction fees. Something like this: http://bitfury.com/products#16nm-asic

I will mine bitcoin as long as there is  a block chain. ( there are many people that will do this)


 So the question was pointless.  I am surprised the mods have not closed the thread.

Mining would never stop there will be people who would run machines even if financial loss and chalk it up as a hobby.   So there will always be some there.  And I think the mega mining centers pay pennies per KWH so little they are going to be hard not to profit... so don't see mega mines stopping.

This is kinda a scare topic of something that will never happen.  And with BTC on a upswing on value... this really does not make sense as of now.

I think if mining stopped, bitcoin would still be going, just no more would be generated.

That is right. There will always mining if the bitcoin transaction happens. The fee should support the network.

The one thing OP is missing is that difficulty will adjust to the hash rate the network currently has.  So like every industry if there are lots of competitors willing to invest to make very small profit they will continue in that direction.  Also Just like most industry's we have given away the manufacturing to the Chinese due to the simple fact they can produce huge volume at very low prices.  No one can really compete with that

I kinda feel it's the same territory as 51 percent attack here.  We can think of many things that would straight out kill BTC.... but they will never happen.   No BTC pool making big money would do 51 percent attack and kill future profits.   Just like there will always be miners.

And you have a good point if bitcoin tanks there will always be some (including myself) who will have a machine running out of pure joy.  I want to make ROI.  But if BTC failed.... I think a surprising number would still mine a small amount.  I also think crypto currency will be here long after today, I think BTC looks like good bet long term.  But if it failed it would there would be another to pop up.  But again BTC is like the gold standard.... so would take huge jump for it to fall.

No mining will probably never happen. All altcoins no matter how small usually have some cheap miner running 24/7 to process transactions and at least keep up the infrastructure. I run a personal altcoin and I have an old Block Erupter processing my own payments that I make to myself. Without mining I assume bitcoin will just end, but seriously, there will always be at least 1 hash/s of power on bitcoin no matter what happens, and blocks will continue to be mined.

this can be a problem if tx fee will be too high in the future, certainly true for microtransaction, it must be reviewed or changed to allow micro fee for microtransaction

but it yet to be seen where this whole thing is going

The network will not be miner less. And run at 1th or less.

I certainly can afford to run an s-7 at freq 200 which is about 1600gh and costs 400 watts a day

That is 10 kwatts a day or 300 kwatts a month at ten cents 30 bucks a month.

I can spend that for the next 30 years easy.  So if I can do that others will to.   So like I said the if the op is asking is not going to happen.


Other tricks can happen but zero hash rate not likely

You really have some reading to do on BTC. .  No transaction fee's are not counter intuitive to long term goals.

Reward ( https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining#Reward )
When a block is discovered, the discoverer may award themselves a certain number of bitcoins, which is agreed-upon by everyone in the network. Currently this bounty is 25 bitcoins; this value will halve every 210,000 blocks. See Controlled Currency Supply.

Additionally, the miner is awarded the fees paid by users sending transactions. The fee is an incentive for the miner to include the transaction in their block. In the future, as the number of new bitcoins miners are allowed to create in each block dwindles, the fees will make up a much more important percentage of mining income.

Don't want to post it all but good info here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

Transaction fees?  Isn't that counter intuitive?  One of the big selling points of Bitcoin is that you can send BTC anywhere around the world for free.  Charging transaction fees is becoming another Western Union or Paypal.
 

As I understand mining still has years to go, and when mining is done, transaction fees will keep machines running.

Ohhh thank you for the many laughs philipma.  Was a funny as heck way to explain it gave me a unexpected laugh.

Also OP you are forgetting sadly most mining is done at mega mines with industrial size miners.   Us home/hobby people still exist but are becoming less and less of the hashrate.   What will be the long term of this?  Not really sure.  But I don't see no mining happening anytime soon. 

And if bitcoin did fail (i don't see it happening anytime soon) I foresee there will always be a crypto currency that is used.  It just seems like technology that will not go away.

No you just do not understand .   your state ment has the exact same meaning as the one below.


 If your grandma had testicles she would be your grand dad


key word is IF in both statements.

"If Yes"  to be exact in your idea.

No the BTC machines don't send money to each other. If they find a block solution, the pool will include some transactions in the block found.

And no, if BTC keep up, mining will always be profitable. If its not for 90% of the machines, then 90% of the machine will drop and the rest of the 10% will get 10x more.

So I was driving home from work tonight and rather than listen to NPR as I normally do, I started thinking...

Am I correct in saying that our bitcoin mining machines are what send the BTC to each other, confirm all the transactions, and keep the Bitcoin network operating?  If yes, keep reading.  If no, never mind - sorry to have wasted your time.

If Yes...
People generally mine because it produces Bitcoin, not because of some grand noble gesture, right?  Well as the difficulty keeps increasing, older machines produce less and less.  To make BTC, machines need to hash faster and faster to compete with each other.  With less Bitcoin being produced, mining machines creating *more* heat, and requiring significantly more electricity to run (and cool) them... there has to come a time when mining will absolutely become an expense and will never make anybody money (even despite bulk sales or free electricity).  The machines would have to use so much electricity that *only* special businesses would be able to buy that kind of power (and it wouldn't be cheap).

People will start turning off miners and not even bothering to sell them because the market would be flooded with so much worthless mining equipment that nobody would dare use them (like trying to GPU mine Bitcoin at 60 Kh/s today). So after people stopped causing blackouts in neighborhoods because of the Antminer S89, and the greedy Chinese companies have shut down because they've mined the very last Bitcoin...what happens to Bitcoin?  If every single miner (even the silly little 3 Gh/s usb asics) were to turn off... would Bitcoin stop working?  If I were to send BTC to a friend, would it just stay unconfirmed forever?

Why would Bitcoin be designed to operate in such a terrible way?  I would never pay money monthly or install a 60db space heater in my house so I can keep Wells Fargo or Bank of America running, so what will be the motivation to keep Bitcoin running?  If governments keep ignoring or banning Bitcoin and it never becomes anything more than it is now, how could it possibly continue to exist?  I must be missing something, because why would someone purposely create a currency that self destructs?  Anyway... just a thought.